Hi @mysticcoffee. Sorry to hear you are dealing with something like this. I can give you some answers to your questions, then I have a suggestion that could help you in the future. But, first, the Square rep you spoke with is correct — even if you have a strong suspicion about fraud they can’t technically flag transactions based upon suspicion. The legal jeopardy they could incur (if they were wrong) would not be pretty. To answer your questions:
- I can’t, unless they are ordering for different locations using payment cards assigned to those locations. For a regional business that does all the ordering for their satellite offices/branches, this could be a valid way of keeping the books straight.
- Visa and Mastercard are going to say the same thing Square did. In the absence of cold, hard facts there’s not much they can do.
- No, it won’t alert the cardholders (if you are correct about fraud), but it will protect you. That is really your only concern here — to protect your business. Your desire to protect others is laudable, but you need to do what you feel is best for your business. If you feel as strongly as you do that these are fraud, then you should refund all of the transactions. Unfortunately, since they were approved by the cardholders’ banks, you will be out the processing fees, which are not refunded.
Having said all of that….. Square has something called Risk Manager for online sales. With it you can set up flags that will either ask customers for more information to verify their identity OR will flag suspected transactions (based upon your rules) for you to review and either reject or accept. It is not perfect, and it will not catch everything. There’s also a chance it will flag perfectly legitimate transactions based upon your rules. But it’s better than nothing. Here’s a link to the Getting Started guide. The short video is worth watching to give you an overview of the process. Also, I would go to the Square Help board and search for “Risk Manager,” being sure to limit the results to “Help Articles” rather than “All Articles.” There is a lot of very helpful information to assist you in figuring out what sorts of rules and actions you might want to set up.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Chip A.
Square Expert & Innovator and member of the Square Champions group. (But NOT a Square employee, just a seller like you)
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